I don't mean the Australian version, and I don't mean the revival, both of which featured an older version of Kitten, where she is a romantic partner for Cat-Man (or perhaps it was Catman by then?) instead of a ward or whatever-you-call-it.
Now, I've never read any version of Cat-Man and Kitten (the only Catman I'm familiar with is Gail Simone's :), who is an entirely different character). Here's just about all I know about the Golden Age hero team:
[David] Merryweather...dons a costume and becomes the Cat-Man... Just to make his life more complicated as a U.S. soldier, he gains an unlikely crime-fighting sidekick--an eleven-year-old girl named Katie Conn.
After Katie's parents are killed in a train wreck,the soldier informally "adopts" her. Since the girl is a trained acrobat, he makes her his aide and mascot. With a similar, cute cat-suit, Katie becomes Kitten. Although Katie takes to calling the Cat-Man her "Uncle David," the innocent relationship progresses as Kitten grows up in a big way. By the end of the series, the coquettish and fully developed Kitten and her Uncle David could certainly provide rich fodder for small-minded gossips.*
I'm very interested in the earlier books in this title (while Kitten was still a girl), but as far as I know, they have never been reprinted. The book was published by Holyoke Publishing, a fairly small company--however, it's possible that a larger company may have purchased the rights to the book in the 60 or so years intervening. Particularly I'm interested in seeing how the Golden Age writers treated a female kid sidekick and wondering whether there was any significant difference in the hero-sidekick relationship (not a particularly responsible one at the best of times back then) when the sidekick was a girl.
* Benton, Mike. Superhero Comics of the Golden Age. Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1992.
4 comments:
AC Comics has reprinted virtually (covering here in case there's one we haven't!) all the Cat-Man and the Kitten stories from the 40's in Men of Mystery and Golden Age Greats since the early 90's, and at least a couple of Cat-Man issues which have reprints (plus all new stories for AC, a few of which I did, one which deals with bridging the gap between when she appeared as a young kid sidekick by Quinlan and the more mature Fuji version). Buy 'em now at www.accomics.com
I'm shocked that you did a a online search for this and couldn't find anything! Shocked!
I'm surprised as well--everything I saw seemed to indicate that the AC comics were more modern. (Then again I don't think I looked at any commercial sites, and didn't see AC's own site at all.)
Thanks for the pointer! :)
There were other female sidekicks in the late Golden Age. After WWII ended and Timely's sales fell, the Human Torch traded in Toro for Sun Girl and Captain America lost Bucky for Betty, the Golden Girl. Namor started appearing with Namora too, but I don't know if that really counts.
The Timely thing only lasted for three issues, and I believe that all the females involved were adults. I know Sun Girl and Namora were, anyhow. I don't know about Betty.
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